Follow me down to the valley below
by Evil's Sidekick
Summary: After a brutal night with his clients, Finnick arrives at Cinna's doorstep, bruised and broken. It's only then he realizes that there's more than one kind of brutality. Lotsa angst, slash. Cinna/Finnick


Finnick falls asleep leaning against the door, waiting for it to open. His knuckles are curled loosely into a fist; his mouth mumbles soft secrets into the wood of the door, which is slowly dissolving under his skin, the mahogany shifting and swirling until it's not solid anymore, just another illusion.

He has a recurring dream of the sea, one where the back of his mouth tastes of seaweed and water weighs his clothes down, dragging him to an unnamed place at the bottom of the ocean. He welcomes it now like an old friend, the confusion of the present relaxing into the familiar patterns of a childhood nightmare.

Then, something changes.

In his dream, Cinna's there, looking, if not at home, then resigned with a dash of optimism. Where Finnick feels washed away, Cinna looks immaculate, right down to the gold eyeliner.

Finnick tries to tell him, _you're drowning, don't you see, _but Cinna shakes his head but doesn't say anything. Finnick tries to push him towards the narrow bar of sunlight that's filtering through the waves desperately but Cinna's too heavy, he refuses to go.

Finnick is terrified.

Awareness comes in a lurch and the sharp sensation of freefalling. His hands go out automatically to break his fall, but it's too late. He lies on the floor, sprawled and only half-awake. His legs are suddenly white-hot with pain, stars exploding across his vision. His skin feels peeled. He makes a noise of surprise and tastes blood on his tongue.

"Finnick, what-" swears. Hands on his body, fluttering around, and a voice that is unmistakably Cinna's says, "Fuck."

He opens his eyes to take in the sight of Cinna kneeling beside him, expression warped with dismay. His eyes are wide, fear pouring from the uneven set of his mouth.

_Huh,_ Finnick thinks foggily. _Must be worse than usual._

Then the waves claim him again, and he passes out gratefully.

(break)

His temple feels like it has a knife driven through it when he wakes up. The searing pain has found time to settle into his bones, a persistent ache instead of the erratic, blinding bursts. He tries to open both eyes but only one complies; the other has swollen shut.

Survival kicks in, and he jerks to an upright position, only to fall back with a choked gasp as his spine seems to disintegrate at the movement, exploding in a burst of pain.

"You deserved that," a voice says somewhere off to his left.

Finnick's mouth twists in a grin that tastes bitter and poisonous. "Cinna," he says.

He moves his head gingerly, recognizing the soft touch of Capitol pillows under his head. The whisper of silk against his skin slowly begins to register, no longer setting his frayed nerve endings on fire but consoling them.

"I'm on your bed," he says. His voice sounds unrecognizable; like the rest of him, it's scoured and split open, a ghost of itself. Experience tells him that the bruising of his throat will make him sound like this for half a week at least.

"You're in my bed," Cinna affirms, still disquietingly out of Finnick's periphery. "In my room, in my apartment, in my life. And I distinctly remember you swearing that would never happen again."

Too late, Finnick hears that telltale catch in Cinna's voice. The robotic monotone of his earlier pronouncements fade and Finnick almost laughs at the irony of it all: Cinna's livid.

But the pain's too much, and there's something new laced with the spikes of physical agony, something very close to suffocation. His chest hurts, but it's a different kind of pain, heavier.

He tries to tell Cinna that, but the blanket of exhaustion descends and he goes out like a light.

(break)

Finnick squirms and Cinna snaps, "don't be a fucking baby. Hold still."

Finnick tries, but the sting of cold water is agony as Cinna washes his face with a wet towel. He can tell by Cinna's expression that his face isn't the worst of it. His nose feels broken and his jaw shattered, but his limbs feel split open and salted.

When Finnick's nose begins bleeding again, Cinna cries, "what have they _done, _Finnick?"

They both tense, neither quite expecting his outburst. Finnick says, levelly, "what they always do," and Cinna snorts without humor.

Afterwards, Cinna wraps him carefully in a fleecy white towel and guides him to the bed. A snarky comment hovers on the edge of his lips despite that he really can't walk alone, but Finnick bites it back.

With almost all his bones feeling snapped, but clean now. Finnick smiles as he falls asleep.

(break)

A long time ago, Cinna didn't look away when he smiled at Finnick's jokes, his innuendoes, meeting Finnick's gaze head on with a curved smile. A long time ago, Cinna met his eyes across a crowded room and grinned bright, young, crazy in love.

Finnick doesn't remember much of those days; after all, survival's his specialty, and those crowded weeks when Cinna leaned into him and curved his finger in his belt loop and joy shot through his veins like some unidentified narcotic are the kind of memories that can tear Finnick apart. He has them at a roped-off corner of his mind, buried deep deep deep where he might not stumble across them by accident and become undone.

They didn't last, those weeks. Eventually, he came back home one day bruised and beaten, fucked through a whole night by the nation's finest, and Cinna had waited until Finnick could walk on his own again before he left.

Few things stand out from that morning. The foremost is the wrecked set of Cinna's mouth as he said, _can't take seeing you like this, it's going to kill me before it kills you, don't you see?_

Cinna's departure made something break in Finnick, that day. Not his heart, not precisely. More of a thin vestige of hope, hope that sprang up shyly whenever Cinna kissed the corner of his mouth and whispered, "you're perfect, how'd you manage?" with genuine wonder in his voice. Hope that stirred when Cinna smiled and Finnick's breath caught. Hope that he might find a way back to where he came from, after all.

(break)

Finnick drifts in and out of consciousness for the next couple of hours.

Once, he opens his eyes to the near-dark of the room, lit only by the flashing neon of the city outside. One of the walls of the room is glass, overlooking the traffic and crowds of the streets. The sky bleeds, pouring out noise and light above the Capitol, and for a second it looks beautiful and utterly broken, beyond all hope.

Finnick gets to his feet, ignoring the way the motion sets every cell in his body on fire despite his care. He makes his way to the window and stands there looking over at the broken shell of the city that destroyed him.

There's a noise, and he turns around to face Cinna, who's frozen in place in the middle of the room. There's a steaming cup in his hand but it's tilted dangerously, threatening to spill its contents over the edge.

They stare at each other, the rise and fall of their breath in perfect synchronization. Finnick wonders, heart thudding loudly, whether Cinna can almost see it too: that alternate reality where they are so ridiculously happy together.

Cinna says, "maybe-" the same time Finnick says "Cinna, I-" and Cinna laughs, an small huff of breath.

Finnick experiences a slight terror again. A voice at the back of his mind screams, _don't let him speak first, _but he's too late.

"There's morphling, do you think you need it?"

The magic shatters with an almost audible tinkle. Finnick feels deserted when Cinna begins moving around in an illusion of being busy, arranging the bed, setting the cup on the nightstand. He swallows back the words that are on the tip of his tongue, waiting to be let free. Those words have clawed at the confines of his mind for months, ever since Cinna left him: _Cinna, I don't think this makes sense anymore. _

Cinna turns to face him finally. He seems surprised to see finnick still standing there, framed by the window. "Come on," he says, moving to touch Finnick on the arm. "You look like you may fall over any second."

Finnick implores, "_Cinna."_

Cinna's shoulders go up; he doesn't meet Finnick's eyes. He makes Finnick lie down on the bed, his movements wary, courteous.

Finnick tries again. "Why can't we-"

Fast as lightning, Cinna presses his arm against Finnick's damaged throat and Finnick cries out, his eyes watering. When the white spots fade from his vision, Cinna's standing back, looking like he just got shot. "That's why, Finn."

When the blackness hits him at first contact with the pillow, Finnick makes no attempt to fight it.

(break)

He wakes up for brief spates, and every time, Cinna's there, sitting beside him. Once he panics, because it doesn't feel real to see Cinna so stationary, his profile so distinct in the night. No sketchpad; no bundles of material.

Once, Cinna touches the side of his face, the side he still has feeling in.

"Sleep," he says.

So Finnick does.

(break)

The Avox wakes him in the morning and re-washes the cut on his face. There's an empty cup on the night stand. Sunlight, brash and loud, crashes into the room.

Cinna's gone.


End file.
